S E V E N T H H O U S E

M E D I A

Features

TOP SECRET RESERVES
wildlife sites in Norfolk with a military past

commissioned and published by
The Norfolk Wildlife Trust - 2011

A PhotoFeature written and photographed by
CLIVE DUNN

East Anglia was on the front line during the Second World War. Since its outbreak vast swathes of farmland and coastal marshes were requisitioned by the military for both training purposes and defence. Airfields sprang up everywhere and in Norfolk alone there were over sixty functioning bases. Installations like the ubiquitous pill box became synonymous with a landscape under threat from invasion. Across Norfolk today many of these features still remain, albeit in a ruinous state. Strips of hastily constructed concrete runways, too robust to be dug up, stretch out across the fields as silent reminders of when the skies were full of either Spitfires or Wellington bombers, weighed down by their payload heading for Nazi Germany.When war was finished the armed forces by and large left Norfolk to its own devices once more. But the county that produced the first green shoots of nature conservation would never be the same again. Advancements in agriculture irrevocably altered the landscape. Yet ironically it was discovered that areas where public access had been denied and regular farming activities curtailed actually made rather good nature reserves, after the military had packed up and gone. Reserves like Holme Dunes, Ranworth Broad, Honeypot Wood and East Wretham Heath wrested away from military usage emerged as havens for wildlife. Instead of disguising their military past, there have been conscious decisions to incorporate extant buildings, segments of runway and the like into the ecological make-up of the reserves. This is not apparent neglect, or an unwillingness to tidy up the tracts of countryside in their care, instead it’s part of a deliberate NWT management strategy.